PATENT GENERATION AND THE TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT OF REFRACTORIES AND STEELMAKING

Patents have shown to be useful tools to point out trends in technological progress for a given field, as well as priorities and research relationships among organizations. The aim of this work is to analyze the technological advances in the refractory field based on the number of patents in some relevant areas. The results highlight some changes within this sector, the understanding of the present situation and identifying future trends. For this study, a search in the Derwent Innovation Index database (by Thomson ISI) was carried out and the retrieved data was dealt with and inserted into a local database to detect relationships among its fields. A significant decrease in the patent generation in the refractories area in the 90's was observed. The increase of steel production over the last decade and the worldwide expectation of the increase in productive capacity indicate that the phenomenon is related to technological maturity in the sector. Nevertheless, reducing costs depends strongly upon continuous technological development, whereby innovation is a fundamental aspect regarding competitive advantage.